Meet Our Project Analysts

Boston

Alex Blutman graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 2017 with a BA in Public Policy and a minor in Computer Science. His senior thesis, which earned a departmental award for highest distinction, examined proposals for reforming the collegiate athletic model to provide student-athletes with monetary compensation. Outside of class, Alex was a member of Dukes & Duchesses, acting as a student ambassador for distinguished university guests. He was also a student manager for the Duke University men’s basketball team, winning a national championship with the program in 2015.

In addition, Alex spent time at PR+Partners, a Las Vegas-based sports management firm, where he helped handle clients, and Nevadans for Background Checks, where he served as a Field Organizer and Campaign Fundraising Intern to aid the passage of Question 1 on Nevada’s 2016 ballot, which established required background checks for private gun sales.

Olivia Castor graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2017 with a joint degree in Social Studies and African American Studies. Her senior thesis, “Out of the Courts, Into the Streets!: An Examination of Legal-Activist Relationships in the Movement for Black Lives,” analyzed the historical, theoretical, and organizational relationship between direct action activists and civil rights lawyers in the contemporary Movement for Black Lives.

While at Harvard, Olivia served on the Harvard College Committee for Academic Integrity and the Harvard College Diversity and Inclusivity Working Group. She also studied abroad at the State University of Zanzibar in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and at the University College London in London, England. Olivia spent her summers working at the Advancement Project and the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Joanne graduated from Harvard University in 2016 with a BA in Government. Her senior thesis examined the legal evolution of the right to privacy in the U.S. Supreme Court and applied key themes from her analysis to a then-undecided Supreme Court case that challenged the status quo for privacy protections. In college, Joanne was committed to political and legal organizations and public service. At the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, she served as the Digital Strategy Chair of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, and was the Editor in Chief of the Harvard College Law Review.

She was also a teaching assistant for CS105: Privacy and Technology, Harvard's first interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar on privacy. Off campus, Joanne volunteered with the human rights clinic at the Cambridge Legal Services and Counseling Center. Joanne spent two summers in Washington D.C. interning at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and conducting privacy research at the Federal Trade Commission, as well as a summer studying abroad in Venice, Italy.

Sarah graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in History and Political Science. Her senior thesis, “Replacing Periods with Question Marks: A Study of the Role of Public Education in Kanawha County, West Virginia,” analyzed the teaching of moral education in public schools and the rights of parents, teachers, and students in curriculum decision making processes. While at Penn, Sarah was actively involved with the local chapter of Best Buddies, Penn Model Congress, and Women’s Political League.

She was also a fellow and grant recipient as a part of both the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism and the Penn Humanities Forum. In addition, Sarah has spent time interning in rural Ghana, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, the Brookings Institution, and the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity.

Kayla Fries graduated summa cum laude from Boston College with a B.A. in psychology and a business law concentration. During her undergraduate experience, she interned for the BC Law School Innocence Program, where she underwent investigative training, logged documents and reports, and maintained communication with wrongfully convicted clients. Kayla co-founded an undergraduate branch of the Innocence Program, and organized exonerees and their attorneys to speak on campus regarding their fight for justice. She was a member of the BC Mock Trial team as a defense attorney and witness for the prosecution, and received an “All-Region Witness” award during the 2016 Mock Trial Regionals.

Kayla also conducted independent research for BC’s Morality Lab, a neuropsychology lab dedicated to researching the sections of the brain utilized in moral judgments. Kayla was a summer intern for the NYS Office of the Attorney General, where she worked in the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau, and for Volunteer Legal Services Project, where she worked primarily in family and consumer law and organized a debt and bankruptcy clinic for clients with financial turmoil.

Eric graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University in 2016 with a B.A. in Political Science and Italian Studies. He spent a semester abroad at the University of Bologna in Italy, where he studied Italian politics and literature. While at Tufts, Eric worked at the Boys and Girls Club of Somerville, M.A., where he was named Volunteer of the Year in 2015-2016. He was the co-leader of ALLIES (The Alliance Linking Leadership in Education and the Services), a student run organization dedicated to studying civil military relations and forging relationships between civilian and military undergraduate students.

Eric spent one summer as an investigative intern at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he investigated felony cases on behalf of indigent clients, and two summers as an intern at the Oneida County District Attorney’s Office in Utica, N.Y., where he assisted attorneys and staff with cases at all stages of the prosecutorial process.

Rachael graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2016 with a BA in Government, a minor in Economics, and a Language Citation in Arabic. Her senior thesis analyzed how Egypt's British colonial legacy and subsequent distribution of power following the country's 1952 revolution have contributed to stable autocratic government through several moments of political turbulence, including the Arab Spring.

While at Harvard, Rachael served as an Associate Managing Editor of the Harvard Political Review, overseeing the World, Campus, and Interviews sections. She also worked on the Institute of Politics' Fellows Selection Committee, was a liaison to former State Department Special Representative Farah Pandith, and served as Vice President of AMBLE, a group devoted to connecting women and minority students to career opportunities in finance, consulting, media, tech, and other industries. Rachael spent her summers working as a research assistant with the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Project, interning in TJX Co.'s business sustainability department, and serving as a speech writer for Lt. Governor Karyn Polito.

Morgan Sandhu graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 2017 with a B.A. in Government and a minor in Public Policy. While at Dartmouth, Morgan was president of Mock Trial, a Rockefeller Leadership Fellow, and editor of an online campus literary magazine, Mouth. She was also heavily involved with the Policy Research shop where she authored non-partisan reports for New Hampshire and Vermont legislators, addressing issues such as pretrial service procedures and local government service provision.

Off campus, Morgan pursued her interests through a term abroad at the University of Copenhagen, where she studied European Union policy and processes, and two internships in Washington, D.C., at the National Disability Institute and in the United States Senate. Last summer, Morgan worked in Pristina, Kosovo to publish a research report analyzing access to and utilization of healthcare services in Kosovo.

Katie Walsh graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University in 2017 with a B.A. in Journalism & Mass Communication and Political Science. During her time at GW, she focused her studies on the intersection between media, politics, and government. Katie was the President of GW’s all Greek leadership honor society which recognized the academic and co-curricular achievements of over 150 students. During her time in Washington D.C., she interned for a variety of organizations in the political sphere.

This spring she had the opportunity to work as a government relations intern at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck where she assisted client teams in navigating the new administration’s legislative priorities. Prior to Brownstein, Katie interned at QGA Public Affairs focusing on client matters in the telecommunications and healthcare policy sectors. She also interned at CLS Strategies, a strategic communications firm, and the American Enterprise Institute.

New York

Selena Kitchens graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University in 2017 with a B.A. in Classics. Her senior thesis, “De Puellis Doctis: Roman Reactions to Learned Women,” examined Roman attitudes toward educated women as demonstrated in Latin texts about the Greek poetess Sappho and in poetry both by and about the Roman poetess Sulpicia. She was a Residential College Outreach Fellow in the University Writing Center, a founding board-member and managing editor of the Princeton Undergraduate Law Review, and the Chair of the Arts Coalition subcommittee of the University Student Government, which worked to expand the presence and visibility of student artwork on campus.

Selena spent the summer of 2015 as an intern for the Federal Public Defender’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, where she assisted in discovery review, factual research, client interviews, and memo-drafting for felony cases on behalf of indigent clients. The following summer, she interned at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, where she assisted in production of discovery for multiple complex, multi-defendant public corruption cases.

Saaket graduated from Columbia University in 2016 with a BA in Economics and Political Science. While at Columbia, Saaket was the Class President, acting as a liaison between the students and the administration to advocate for student needs and plan large-scale community events. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review.

During his tenure he increased readership and circulation to span the entire university, and also developed a complementary website to publish shorter articles related to current events in the legal field. He was also involved in Model UN and teaching public speaking in New York City Public Schools through Youth for Debate. Having worked at law firms in Hong Kong, Ohio, and New York City, Saaket learned a great deal about bankruptcy codes and how multinational corporations operate across different jurisdictions.

Washington, DC

Fatema graduated summa cum laude from The George Washington University in 2016 with a BA in Political Science (Public Policy Focus). Her senior honors thesis focused on programmatic enfranchisement and youth voting rights in the U.S. In the realm of academia, Fatema has presented original research on the socio-legal implications of the school-to-prison pipeline at the Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference and has been published several times.

Most recently, Fatema’s paper titled “Conscious Court Policy & Public-Private Partnerships: Alternatives to Civil Gideon” was published in the Spring 2016 issue of the Columbia University Undergraduate Law Review. As an undergraduate, Fatema spent her time interning for Congressman Rush Holt, as a Summer Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and as the inaugural and only undergraduate intern at the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division.

Olivia Graham graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 with a BA in Urban Studies and a minor in Hispanic Studies. Her senior thesis explored socio-spatial relationships within Philadelphia’s growing number of co-working spaces. While at Penn, Olivia worked in the management department developing and testing research protocol to measure collaboration between environmental NGOs as well as in the sociology department conducting research on religious denominations and eugenics in the early 20th century.

She produced UPenn’s VDay movement, one of the country’s oldest and largest campus campaigns to end gender-based violence, and served on both the Urban Studies Department’s Undergraduate Advisory Board and the Policy Board of WXPN, an NPR affiliate radio station. Additionally, she has spent time interning for the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and for a media and issue advocacy firm.

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